Posts highlighting Temple Grandin have accounted for six out of the eight top-performing posts over the last eight months on the College of Agricultural Sciences Facebook page – and this comes at no surprise. People interact with the content they love.

Temple Grandin is a pioneer in improving the handling and welfare of farm animals. The facilities she designed for handling livestock are used by companies around the world, and she created animal welfare auditing programs used by McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Whole Foods, and more. She’s been featured by numerous news outlets and publications, including being named one of the 100 most influential people by Time Magazine in 2010.

During Temple Grandin’s birthday, we reached more than 65,000 people with 460 shares and received over 10,000 engagements on Facebook alone. We also grew by nearly 100 fans over the course of that week across all platforms.

There’s more to just highlighting all-stars than just the engagement factor. These all-stars are key in creating a loyal fanbase, growing followers and inviting the community to learn more about other the amazing things your brand is doing.

Typically, I place key brand information content before and after the all-star content to highlight other important initiatives. In the example of Dr. Grandin’s birthday, the timing worked out perfectly that we opened a Western Campus the day of her birthday, so we posted the grand opening the next day after our followers had grown. In the days prior, the new #ProudToBe brand video was shared along with a piece on research monetary support.

Providing your fans with a balanced “meal” of content – chocolate cake (all-stars, campus beauty, awards), meat and veggies (strategic initiatives, research) sets your brand up for success on social media.

How to identify all-stars:

• Are they internationally known?
• Who’s impacted an entire industry?
• Are they active on their own platforms?
• Are they open to meeting with the public or media?
• Will they allow you to cover them on social media?
• What do the analytics say about certain people/content types?

Once you identify the all-stars, it’s helpful to set up Google Alerts or utilize your own tracking systems (Cision, TrackMaven, Nuvi, Sprout Social, etc.) to pick up any sort of coverage on said all-star. This will help create a content library so it’s easier to sprinkle the all-star content in between key initiatives on your content calendar.

Things to consider:

• Can you elevate this content to the main campus platforms?
• Is this person willing to go live on Facebook or Instagram?
• Does the content with the all-star provide value to your audiences? If not, how can you frame the content, so it does?
• How can you adjust the content to fit each platform in its own unique way?